Nuclear Disarmament MADness

The UK's Guardian is reporting that President Obama is planning to drastically reduce and eventually eliminate our nuclear arsenal.

"Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal."

The policy of MAD - Mutually assured destruction - was initiated during the Cold War and continues to this day. Essentially, MAD dictates that you keep enough nuclear weapons that a devastating attack on your country can be returned in like kind, ensuring that if one nation begins a nuclear exchange, both parties (and to some extent their allies) will be more or less annihilated, thus preventing such an exchange from ever occurring. Critics may argue that this policy is indeed "mad", but as it is obvious that such a nuclear exchange never occurred, it's hard to argue that it failed.
One very important point is this: MAD is not concerned with the quantities of warheads, but with the RELATIVE quantities. So the issue is not to have a certain level of nuclear strength, but to retain nuclear parity.

Apparently Russia, pleased with our removal of the planned missile shield sites in Eastern Europe, has indicated it might be willing to reduce their stockpiles as well.

"Russia has approximately 2,780 deployed strategic warheads, compared with around 2,100 in the US. The abandonment of the US missile defence already appears to have spurred arms control talks currently underway between Washington and Moscow: the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, said today that chances were "quite high" that a deal to reduce arsenals to 1,500 warheads each would be signed by the end of the year."

So, this retains nuclear parity, assuming that both sides have the means to verify that the deal was being followed. The Doomsday Clock will be turned back a few minutes, and all will be well. Except...

"Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials."

Most people agree that it would be wonderful to live in a world in which nuclear weapons did not exist. However, we do not. And we cannot pretend that we do. And now more and more nations are developing such capabilities. Pandora's box has been opened, and one cannot gather the destructive powers released and enclose it again.

The Soviet Union's leadership clearly did not wish for their own destruction. They viewed a massive nuclear bombardment on their nation as resulting in their destruction, and thus took steps to avoid it. Thus, MAD succeeded, at least on the most important level of preventing global nuclear pandemonium.

Now think of a nation like Iran. I should say that I have no issue with the Iranian people. The Iranians that I have met have tended to be intelligent and likable. But their highest leadership in recent years have shown (through things such as demanding the utter destruction of Israel and denying the holocaust, for example) that they are both genocidal and out of touch with reality.

Imagine if Iran does develop nuclear weapons, a feat they are currently on the brink of accomplishing. Now imagine if an even more unstable set of radical Islamic leaders came to power. They could proclaim that a unilateral strike is mandated to please Allah by destroying Israel, and as such that Allah will protect them from any retaliatory strikes. They might also determine that truly destroying Israel must be accompanied by destroying their ally, the 'great satan' America. Their missiles cannot reach us here in the CONUS (Continental United States), but what about our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan? The concept of MAD is thus totally destabilized, and the risk of nuclear war grows perilously near.

This is purely hypothetical, of course. But it is hypothesis grounded in reality, and a realistic observation of the tendencies of nations.

What is unrealistic is trying to pretend that nuclear weapons never existed, or that, having existed, they can be eliminated forever.

We live in such a world where policies as outrageous as MAD are required to keep the peace. In such a world, where every nation desperate for power and respect on the world stage is racing to acquire nuclear weapons of their own, a push to eliminate all of ours is not altruistic or visionary, it's madness.

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